Government and the court service are increasingly delegating digital and AI-mediated justice services to private providers, from digital legal information and dispute resolution tools to systems used within justice agencies. This marks a significant departure from previous approaches that prioritised publicly built and owned technology.
This shift is best understood as ‘delegation by default’ rather than design, driven by financial pressures, challenges with court reform and the rapid development of generative AI (GenAI). Regulation and governance have not kept pace, resulting in inadequate protections for litigants and the justice system.
In family justice, the risks are particularly acute because of the nature of disputes and the vulnerability of those involved. Online and AI-assisted legal information and advice can fall outside legal services regulation, leaving people using general-purpose GenAI tools, such as ChatGPT, to obtain legal information or prepare court documents with limited avenues for redress.
There is also evidence that litigants are turning directly to GenAI for advice and document preparation, despite these tools being capable of getting the law wrong. Their tendency to affirm users’ existing beliefs may be particularly problematic in emotionally charged family disputes, potentially entrenching conflict rather than supporting resolution. These tools may also enable vexatious litigants and domestic abusers to produce superficially convincing court documents at scale, placing further pressure on courts.
Within courts, judges have been issued with a secure version of Microsoft Copilot. However, there is limited public information about how its safe use was determined, which tasks it should be used for, how its use is monitored or how litigants can challenge its use. General-purpose large language models can introduce inaccuracies, hallucinations and subtle changes in meaning, while existing safeguards rely heavily on judicial users identifying these problems.
The report is not an argument against digital or AI-mediated justice, or against private-sector involvement. Instead, it argues that the current model of ‘delegation by default’ is a policy choice and should be replaced with a deliberate approach based on publicly governed standards for safety, performance and evidence, supported by effective oversight and accessible redress.
Without action, government risks not only missing the potential benefits of AI and digital technology for access to justice, but creating avoidable costs, undermining public trust and compounding the problems digital justice is intended to address.
The report makes 26 recommendations across four themes. It calls on the Ministry of Justice to:
